


Fic Promptly: A Woman's Part

by AellaIrene



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Genderbending, Time Period: Time of Isolation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-09
Updated: 2011-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:31:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AellaIrene/pseuds/AellaIrene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Vorkosigan Saga, Dorca Vorbarra, a Countess was once legally declared a man in order to become Count, so Dorca doesn't see any reason why she shouldn't be able to become Emperor. After all, she's twice the warrior of all of her brothers and cousins combined.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic Promptly: A Woman's Part

They didn't kill her mother in the Great Square, but Svetlana Vorbarra Vordarian starved to death all the same. Dorca can remember it, just, standing by the cradle that was to have held her new sibling, while her mother was walled up, alive, in the Countess's Quarters.

 _Mutie bitch, daughter of a witch_ and it doesn't matter if they're talking of her or her mother. Dorca has six elder brothers, by her father's first wife, and more than a dozen cousins, by her mother's elder half-brother, the Crown Prince. She's not heir to anything but a matrimony of shame, and everyone knows that, if her father weren't so scared of old Vlad, he'd knife her in her sleep.

No one cares about her. No one but the Armsman detailed to make sure she doesn't fall down a well: old Carlsberg. And he does the unthinkable. He _trains_ her. In skirts she's gawky, apt to falling over and down things, but put a knife in her hand and she knows what her elder sisters' dancing mistress means when she talks of movement. Give her a sword, and she could kill a man. ("Kill _yerself_ , more like," Carlsberg mutters when she tells him. "Now try that pass again.")

When she's fourteen, she looks at her eldest brother, and thinks _Flashy_. Thinks _Leaves himself open there _. Thinks _I could beat him_.__

She never tells anyone that.

When she's fifteen, they're all called to the Residence, even her, and Dorca sneaks away to practice swordplay in one of the deserted courtyards, left empty in the last round of plague. People say that they're haunted, but she does not fear ghosts. Besides, most people say that they're haunted by her grandmother.

She's been going half an hour, when she realises that someone's watching, and she turns, drawing the sword up, en garde.

"Nice arm," drawls Lord Vorrutyer-her-cousin. "Nice footwork, too, coz."

He's never called her coz, before. He's never even spoken to her.

"Don't let anyone else see," he adds. "Not with His Majesty as sick as he is, and your cousins following."

Dorca blinks at him. ( _Lizard-eyes_ , her sisters call it.)

"Not that you'd ever be Emperor," he adds, and does lizard-eyes back at her.

 _Oh no?_ says something inside Dorca, something small and sly, and Dorca raises an eyebrow.

"As you say, cousin," she murmurs smoothly, and dips a curtsey. And as she does it, she _knows_. One day, Cousin Pierre will bend his knee to her, and all Barrayar after him.


End file.
